What books should I use?
Where to start?
How can I make it work this summer? (due to summer classes and work)
I will be able to prep for a full 2 1/2 months in July.
Prepping for the October LSAT (this summer on the weekends) Forum
-
Mr.JD2015
- Posts: 86
- Joined: Sat Feb 05, 2011 10:43 am
-
GoldenGloves
- Posts: 378
- Joined: Sat Jun 12, 2010 1:02 pm
Re: Prepping for the October LSAT (this summer on the weekends)
Start with a diagnostic so you can better assess your cold performance on each section. With two & a half months, I say you should try to complete Powerscore's Logic Game Bible & Manhattan LSAT's RC guide - both are pretty short & will allow you to spend extra time outside of working on the guides drilling questions for these sections. As for LR, both the Powerscore & Manhattan LSAT books are quite lengthy. If you're interested, PM me your email & I'll share some notes taken on the Powerscore LR Bible.
Once you've gotten strategies from the guides down that help you improve, you can begin taking full section exams. I would estimate at least a full month of this will be necessary for you (though the more, the better).
Once you've gotten strategies from the guides down that help you improve, you can begin taking full section exams. I would estimate at least a full month of this will be necessary for you (though the more, the better).
-
totaltest.milan
- Posts: 84
- Joined: Mon Feb 14, 2011 9:45 pm
Re: Prepping for the October LSAT (this summer on the weekends)
You're not giving yourself too much time. Under the assumption that you want the maximum score then in general you need to spend between 3 and 4 months of intense studying that includes doing all of the published LSATs. However, that's generally speaking, there are people who can do well with less, or people who aren't shooting for their maximum.
As the previous post recommended start with a diagnostic to see where you're strong and where you're weak. The basic procedure is then to focus on your weak areas and place less emphasis on your strong areas.
For the logic games section I don't teach my students using the system in the powerscore bible, instead I use a modified version of the system found in the "Big Fat Genius Guide to Logic Games". Not to say that the bible isn't good, but I have found the big fat genius approach more effective. It also might be better for you, since it's much less complex and easier to learn. The trade-off is that it requires more rote and mechanical work. Learn the approaches to the different questions and start doing games. The major issue with this approach should be time and that's something that's improved on with practice.
For the arguments I recommend the powerscore bible. Go through that book and learn the different argument types and the approaches for them. Then practice the questions in isolation until you can do them with reasonable accuracy and confidence. Then do sections.
For the reading comprehension powerscore also has a high-quality book but the issue with reading comprehension is that that's the one section that's most difficult to improve on, particularly with a limited amount of time. There just don't exist strategies that will help you do it better in absence of developing your analytical reading ability. That being said the powerscore book does present a structure that's very useful. With this section it's not terribly helpful to learn the question types in isolation (as it is with the other two sections) so you'll be spending a lot of time with passages. If you can I also recommend reading something challenging every day, I recommend my students read philosophy textbooks. PM me for some suggestions.
Ideally you'd want to use material from the first 30 preptests to learn the fundamentals, doing the questions and sections in isolation. And then have the last 30 preptests for doing them under test conditions. If you could swing it so that you spend your summer learning the fundamentals and have all of september to take tests I think that would be best for you.
Ok, having said all this I think the materials on my site are the best, I have over 20 hours of animated videos that cover all aspects of the test. But I only use them in conjunction with our tutoring packages, so if you want to get a tutor you can think about that. For self-study the stuff above is I think the best.
Best of luck.
As the previous post recommended start with a diagnostic to see where you're strong and where you're weak. The basic procedure is then to focus on your weak areas and place less emphasis on your strong areas.
For the logic games section I don't teach my students using the system in the powerscore bible, instead I use a modified version of the system found in the "Big Fat Genius Guide to Logic Games". Not to say that the bible isn't good, but I have found the big fat genius approach more effective. It also might be better for you, since it's much less complex and easier to learn. The trade-off is that it requires more rote and mechanical work. Learn the approaches to the different questions and start doing games. The major issue with this approach should be time and that's something that's improved on with practice.
For the arguments I recommend the powerscore bible. Go through that book and learn the different argument types and the approaches for them. Then practice the questions in isolation until you can do them with reasonable accuracy and confidence. Then do sections.
For the reading comprehension powerscore also has a high-quality book but the issue with reading comprehension is that that's the one section that's most difficult to improve on, particularly with a limited amount of time. There just don't exist strategies that will help you do it better in absence of developing your analytical reading ability. That being said the powerscore book does present a structure that's very useful. With this section it's not terribly helpful to learn the question types in isolation (as it is with the other two sections) so you'll be spending a lot of time with passages. If you can I also recommend reading something challenging every day, I recommend my students read philosophy textbooks. PM me for some suggestions.
Ideally you'd want to use material from the first 30 preptests to learn the fundamentals, doing the questions and sections in isolation. And then have the last 30 preptests for doing them under test conditions. If you could swing it so that you spend your summer learning the fundamentals and have all of september to take tests I think that would be best for you.
Ok, having said all this I think the materials on my site are the best, I have over 20 hours of animated videos that cover all aspects of the test. But I only use them in conjunction with our tutoring packages, so if you want to get a tutor you can think about that. For self-study the stuff above is I think the best.
Best of luck.
